Communication Commons^™

Lifespan Communication, Social Media Policy, And Societal Institutions: A Content Analysis, Jessica Larae Bedenbaugh

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis is a qualitative study of the major societal institutions' social media policies. Three features are compared-length, readability, and legal orientation and punitive degree-in order to determine the homogeneity of the policies across the institutional categories. The top ten words featured in the policies, from highest weighted percentage to lowest, are the following: social, use, media, post, sites, content, personal, policy, communication, and web. The shortest policy length was 274 words. The longest policy was 36,036 words and the collective average word count was 2,571. The lowest reading level, based on the Gunning Fog Readability Index was 8.21, the …

Earning Trust And Explaining Complexities As You Communicate Climate Science: The Cause Model, Katherine E. Rowan

July 10, 2013: Best Practices and Communications Strategies for Adapting to Sea Level Rise and Flooding

No abstract provided.

Risky Business: Engaging The Public In Policy Discourse On Sea-Level Rise And Inundation, Karen Akerlof

July 10, 2013: Best Practices and Communications Strategies for Adapting to Sea Level Rise and Flooding

No abstract provided.

Depression, Social Anxiety, And Attachment As Predictors Of The Use And Quality Of Cyber Communication, Stefan E. Latulip

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examined the influence of depression symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and adult attachment style on the use and the perceptions of the quality of cyber communications with close friends, romantic partners, and family members. One hundred thirty-five individuals completed an initial survey, with sixty five of the original group completing a follow-up survey five weeks later. Results indicated that anxious attachment was associated with a greater reported usage of social networking sites, whereas avoidant attachment predicted less instant message use over time. Depression symptoms and avoidant attachment were generally associated with perceptions of higher negativity and lower positivity with …

Plight Of The Gameur : Inhibitors To Empathic Connection With Representation Of Suffering In Outreach Games, Kristopher John Purzycki

English Theses & Dissertations

The field of serious game studies, while growing, is still working through the variables that create the conditions for a discernible effect towards real-world player behavior. One branch of serious games I refer to as outreach games aim at informing and prompting the player to take further real-world action. However, a significant impediment to this appeal is the relationship between the player and the game. Referring to the role of the flaneur in post-colonial literature, I describe how the relationship between whom I refer to as the gameur and the outreach game is similar to the urban wanderer, eavesdropping on …

The Residual Resistance Of The Individual Within The Rhizomatic Hegemony Of The Internet, Emma Katherine Wolfe

English Theses & Dissertations

Networked cyborgs that exist within the non-hierarchical rhizomatic network of the Internet risk losing the concept of their individuality as our identity becomes less important than the group. However, if the rhizomatic network is thought of as a hegemony that exists on the Internet, we can resist this through the residual notion of individual identity. Since cyborgs must perform in order to exist on the rhizomatic network, they can become aware of and perform their individuality through awareness of the computer medium. There are three methods for networked cyborgs to assert their individuality discussed in this thesis.

The first is …

“I Know It When I See It”: Style, Simulation And The ‘Short-Circuit Sign’, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The contemporary production of “style” relies heavily on the implementation of the “short-circuit sign” and the relationship of both to the emptiness of fourth-order simulation and to the remediation of successive visual forms. In distinguishing the “short-circuit sign,” film scholar James Monaco highlights the important role of cultural codes in the naturalization and the reification of on-screen images so that signifier and signified become identical, or are perceived as such. It is the cultural codes, then, that distinguish this mode from the establishment of a sign’s iconicity, insofar as the “short-circuit sign” belongs, as it were, to the genre and …

New Perspectives In Leadership: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Public Speaking, Leo S. Lo

Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of overcoming the fear of public speaking.

Zombies As A Generational Metaphor: Connections Between George A. Romero, Zombies And Fandom -- A Critical Study, Alfredo Torres

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Since the creation of the modern day zombie by George A. Romero in his directorial debut with the genre altering film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, zombie have been associated with becoming a metaphoric representation of social and cultural issues surrounding the times these films were released, with Romero's films being at the forefront of this phenomenon. A review of Romero's career including his influences was examined as well as the film history of the zombie subgenre, the connections it has to its fans and how the fans influenced the development of the genre. A survey was connected …

Empathic Communication: Lifespan Influences And Transgressional Associations In Military Romantic Relationships, Samantha Faith Levan

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the influences and transgressional associations of empathic communication in military romantic relationships. Through varying attachment styles, deployments, and combat experience, soldiers have a unique set of circumstances that impact the use of empathic communication in relationships. Since the effectiveness of empathic communication is also limited by unreliable communicative technologies, infidelity effects were also tested. A 66-item online survey was placed on Survey Monkey with links from social media networking websites, like Facebook and Twitter. Surveys were anonymous and only taken by soldiers who had experienced at least one deployment. The goodness of …

Reefer Madness To Marijuana And Legalization: Media Exposure And American Attitudes Towards Marijuana (1975-2010), Richard James Stringer

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

American attitudes toward marijuana have varied greatly from the time it was criminalized in the 1930's until 2010, and public opinion favoring the legalization of marijuana has steadily risen since 1990. Since the media is purported to have had an impact on the legislation rather than objective risk factors, it is possible that the marijuana epidemic could be the result of a socially constructed moral panic. As such, this study utilized General Social Survey data to examine the relationship between media exposure and attitudes toward the legalization of marijuana from 1975 through 2010, 1975 through 1990, and 1991 through 2010. …

Crosswords At A Crossroad: The Puzzle Turns 100. What Is The Clue To Its Survival?, Lynn J. Feigenbaum

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the crossword on Dec. 21, 2013 will be a dedicated, demanding and outspoken following – an online community that may be the key to its future as a popular American pastime. The crossword puzzle has always had a tight-knit core of fans, even in its earliest years. But, for the most part, doing a crossword was a solitary pursuit. That has changed with the advent of a burgeoning fan community on the internet, a virtual community of crossword enthusiasts. It is not far-fetched to regard the saga of the crossword as a microcosm of modern …

The User Experience Of Participation: Tracing The Intersection Of Sociotechnical Design And Cultural Practice In Digital Ecosystems, David L. Jones

English Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I combine methods from Technical Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and User Experience Design to trace the social and creative practices of social web participants. Using actor network theory, I explore the concept of participation as social and creative practice that demands coordinative knowledge work enacted within a cultural space. Leveraging the insight gained from this research, I develop the user experience of participation as a research and design methodology that privileges the movement of people and information in order to structure and re-structure social connections.

I explore this methodology through three intersections between people and technology. …

The Influence Of Social Networking Technology In An Engineering Organization, Derrick Marcus Tepaske

EMSE Doctoral Projects

Computer facilitated Social Networking (SN) is becoming more prevalent in our society, both in our personal and professional lives. As its use grows, there is a desire to determine how it will impact an organization. If it can positively impact an organization then it is an initiative that could be embraced and leveraged for any number of business related activities from marketing to engineering. This project develops and implements a social networking treatment for an engineering organization in order to determine how it impacts the responsiveness and performance of the organization. The treatment includes an online tool, a training package, …

A Phenomenology Of Sns Sharing, Dylan E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this contribution to a phenomenology of social network sites (SNS), we see how the share button brings about an alteration in our being-with others. On the side of the sharer, we see an experience of the world in a mode of possible retroactive sociality, creating an enigma in the constitution and attention of the subject of a given experience. On the side of the receiver, we see how being shared with creates sometimes unwelcome retrospective ideation of the sharer’s experience, and requires a choice whether, by liking or commenting, to bring the sharer into retroactive awareness of having been …

There Is No Word For Work In The Dragon Tongue, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly

English Faculty Publications

The past decade or so has witnessed a relatively steady stream of scholarly interest in the mundane medieval—in labor, local economies, and their influence upon wider cultural production.¹ Despite this interest (and perhaps as a reaction to it), popular medievalism has continued to emphasize versions of the medieval that are decidedly more heroic—productions that are simultaneously (and paradoxically) more “realistic” and more “fantastic.” Labor plays, at best, a supporting role in these fantasies: while not absent, it rarely, if ever, has the same productive presence as it does in recent scholarly treatments of medieval economies. Inasmuch as popular medievalism …

The Role Of Team Preparation Processes And Task Conflict On Virtual Team Performance, Pilar Pazos, Ana María Canto

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of the factors contributing to team performance in global virtual teams. We report on a study on global virtual teams involved on applied projects in industry. Team members differed in location and nationalities. This paper examines the relationships between goal commitment, planning and conflict. Data were collected from 34 teams in an international Master program in Quality Management, Safety and Environmental Impact hosted in Bolivia and Chile. Students were from nine different countries in South America. Students were assigned to teams of size 3 and participated in 15-week project as …

Editor's Introduction: "Making Sense Of The Senseless: A Case For The Insufficiency Of Theory And Hermeneutics", Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This issue is a wonderful compilation of truly excellent essays. I can assure readers that I have read and appreciated them. Indeed, several of them came through my inbox during various stages of preparation and it is encouraging to see such a healthy roster of scholarly contributions. I wish I were able to do them justice. Please read them. Enjoy them. The work alone should give us hope. People are thinking critically and responding creatively. This in and of itself is a good thing. What follows, then, is a call for more good things. It is part response, part self-directed …

Boredom On Facebook, Dylan E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

How Strong Is The Pull Of The Past? Measuring Personal Nostalgia Evoked By Advertising, Altaf Merchant, Kathryn Latour, John B. Ford

Marketing Faculty Publications

Marketers frequently evoke personal nostalgia in their advertising. To date, scales have been developed to measure the propensity to get nostalgic but not the actual dimensions of personal nostalgia. Results from four studies show that advertising-evoked personal nostalgia comprises four correlated but distinct dimensions: past imagery, positive emotions, negative emotions, and physiological reactions. This multidimensional scale showed a high level of validity and reliability. Moreover, due to careful choice of sampling frames, the study demonstrates a high level of external generalizability. Evaluating nostalgia-based advertising using the study's multidimensional scale may provide marketers with strategic insights for developing and fine-tuning advertising …

Introduction: A Game's Study Manifesto, Jason C. Thompson, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

In the epigraph to this collection, we return to a foundational text of the western literary canon, Homer’s Odyssey, and see in Penelope’s “bow contest” an illustrative moment in the history of game culture. Having fought in the Trojan War and having survived his ten-year trek home, the weary Odysseus cannot simply show up—the returning hero must rout the odious suitors whom Penelope has forestalled. In order to buy more time for vengeance, Odysseus disguises himself as an old beggar; in order to buy more time for deferral, Penelope creates an unwinnable game: she will marry the suitor able …

Gay For Play: Theorizing Lgbtq Characters In Game Studies, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Despite, and perhaps because of, popular press reactions to stereotypical depictions of beefy boys and busty babes in video games, the realm of gender, sex, and sexuality remains a lacuna in the emerging field of game studies. Of particular interest is the notion of performance and the ways this impacts both on gender and on game play. The combination might be expected to offer a very interesting way of approaching LGBTQ characters in digital games, especially given the recent inclusion of such characters in some popular and well-studied game franchises, including Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar 1997-present), Jade Empire (BioWare 2005-08) …

Gotcha: What Social Activists Can Learn From Pranksters, Janet M. Bing

English Faculty Publications

It is unfortunate that, even today, feminist messages too often go unheard and feminist issues are too often dismissed by mainstream audiences, partly because feminists continue to be stereotyped as angry and humorless. Yet some social activists use pranks to draw attention to important issues because humor is one strategic way to send messages about sexism to those who may discount ideas presented in a more direct manner. Although there have been relatively few successful feminist pranksters, humor is increasingly being used to convey women's issues in a growing number of feminist blogs and videos. This essay explores pranking and …

The Effect Of Emotionally Arousing Negative Images On Judgments About News Stories, Martin Daniel Smith-Rodden

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Two experiments investigated the effects of the presentations of photographic images (highly emotionally arousing/low arousal/no image) on people's attitudes after reading a news story. Experiment 1 presented a story and images about U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan War. Experiment 2 replicated the design with a story and images about African famine relief efforts. Consistent with predictions of the affect heuristic model of judgment formation, the addition of emotionally arousing pictures had an effect on people's support for the war in Afghanistan and their support for famine aid. Additionally, effects were observed in broader attitudes concerning participant's support of a militaristic …

Using Twitter To Facilitate Case-Based Instruction In A Nursing Classroom, Sherleena Ann Buchman, Patricia Burke Snider, Tian Luo, Kaboni Gondwe

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This paper is a report on the use of Twitter within a sophomore level course in the baccalaureate nursing program at a rural Appalachian university. Students enrolled in the Foundations of Nursing course were in their second year of a traditional nursing program. Meeting the challenge of providing students with a ubiquitous learning environment that extends beyond their rural environment is important in the education of many students in the Appalachian region. The preliminary study looks at the usability of Twitter as the medium that will assist nursing students to build the confidence that comes from completing a case study …

Managing Diversity In Virtual Teams Through Perspective Taking, Nina C. Magpili, Pilar Pazos

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The emergence of information and communication technologies has provided firms with global access to individual talent often resulting in virtual work teams with diverse sets of skills and perspectives. Diversity in the virtual workplace has been linked to richer and more innovative work solutions. However, diversity in surface attributes (ethnicity, gender, etc.) and deep-level attributes (values, attitudes, etc.) may also lead to conflict and misunderstandings which affect the level of trust and team outcome. A virtual environment further complicates diversity interactions because of reduced levels of awareness, isolation, and uninhibited behaviors. Perspective taking has the potential to help teams deal …

Gaming Matters: Art, Science Magic And The Computer Game Medium [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The singular—maybe more aptly put as the pre-eminent—image that occurs when reading Gaming Matters is that of duelling dualisms. While this is a tried-and-true method of covering a topic, from the dissoi logoi to “The Owl and the Nightingale” and beyond, it is the site and the subject of these apposites that makes for an intriguing if (intentionally) unsettling read. The very title of the book makes the exercise of reading (and likely of writing) a part of and apart from this process. Gaming Matters stands as both call and catalogue. Gaming matters, most certainly, in terms of its audience, …

A Study Of Art Therapy-Based Approaches To Communication Between Physicians And Pediatric Patients, Carrie Carowan

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

Miscommunication between physicians and child patients about perceived pain results in problems with diagnosis and treatment of childhood illness. This study used an art therapy-based approach to explore physician perceptions and understanding of child patients’ pain as compared to the pediatric patients’ perceptions of their own pain. Body Outline Forms (BOFs) and Magnified Pain Drawings (MPDs) (Barton, 1995) were completed by participants, and compared using a qualitative content analysis. Visual results reflected a difference in perception of pain by the physician and child participants in areas of color, size, shape, location, and movement. Verbal results collected from the physician participant …

Digital Poetry From A Cyborg Perspective, Daniel James Hosmer

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This study analyzes digital poetry from a cyborg perspective, showing how its multiple material aspects are foregrounded to facilitate the reader's performance of poems. It explores the poetic functions, possibilities, and constraints of the medium of digital poetry through the application of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, comparisons with print methods of conveying meaning, and close readings of digital poems. The application of Theatre of the Oppressed as a framework also allows for the study of the power relationships involved in performing digital poetry and in using digital technology as a whole, while showing digital poetry to be …

Media, Military, Militarism: Media Consumption, Awareness Of U.S. Military Foreign Policy, And Support For War, Daniel James Patten

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between the media, attitudes towards supporting war, and military awareness. Online survey data were collected from a four-year university located in a heavily militarized area. This study found that having knowledge of Afghanistan and Iraq War facts negatively affected one's decision to support war and was the strongest predictor of this decision. The media was not found to be a significant predictor impacting this knowledge when controlling for other variables. Political ideology and other related variables were found to be more influential of this knowledge. These findings imply that the public may be imprudently supporting …